About the Online Business Bureau

We are not the Better Business Bureau. The Better Business Bureau charges companies hundreds of dollars each year to become members. The BBB is a private corporation. The BBB needs to collect dues from its members to pay for their large corporate overhead. Most people do not realize that the BBB is just a private company - and not part of any government agency.

The Online Business Bureau is a better alternative for consumers to investigate whether a business is legitimate. Our membership dues are much less than the BBB charges. As a result, many more businesses are willing to join our organization. We believe this allows us to offer greater consumer protection. While we allow any business to join the bureau; we specialize in rating companies that do business online through a website.

The Online Business Bureau maintains an extensive database of companies doing business all over the globe. Our service allows you to research a company before giving them your money. We also give you our assessment of a company whether or not they are a member of our organization.

If you need to investigate a company or research a company, we invite you to use our service to look up a company. If you've been unfortunate enough to have a bad experience, you can use our service to file a complaint about a company. We'll then contact the company on your behalf and ask them to solve your problem. You can be assured that companies who do not respond to complaints through us will receive a negative rating, regardless of whether they are a member.

We are always adding features and resources to our site. We hope you find our free consumer protection services useful. If you have comments or suggestions, we would love to hear them. You can send us your feedback using the contact us link.